Quick Question about the Draft Lottery

[trickybilly]

Ridiculous, I know, but imma starting to feel juicy about the draft lottery. But i have a question which the internet won't answer.

Do brooklyns ping pong balls just assigned to Boston? Like is it possible Silver reads out "and the number 2 pick in the draft is Brooklyn (followed by tears in both Brooklyn and Boston). Let's  say celtics have a rough year and finish dead last. Dallas also sucks finishing 3rd last, but they trade away their pick protection for Avery Bradley. Brooklyn finish 2nd last. Then lets say the celtics "win" the lottery and get the first pick.. will we be able to tell if it was our balls, or Brooklyn's balls, or Dallas'?

This all comes from a disgusting desire to see Brooklyn misery in the knowledge that Ben Simmons should be in a Nets uni next year, really.  But I'm just curious about the weird lotto system aswell.

[obnoxiousmime]

Since each slot is allotted a certain number of combinations, it is possible to tell which combinations are Brooklyn's and which are ours. It's not like they have a thousand ping pong balls each painted with a team's logo, though that would certainly be more exciting.

It wouldn't be possible to do it that way because they need to know the order of the teams who don't place in the top three, which is based on record. If you didn't know if the combo was Brooklyn's or Boston's, you wouldn't know what pick to assign them if one placed outside the top three.

[ThePaintedArea]

Let's  say celtics have a rough year and finish dead last.

 Second in the east is more likely.

[Denis998]

This should answer your question. In 2011 the Cavs had unprotected rights to the clippers pick, which ended up being #1. In the video, the clippers pick actually had a Cavs logo on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLvjo6_Upo

[Csfan1984]

I believe that the balls don't have logos. They are just numbers and the numbers are assigned to teams. It's the same as if you bought a ticket to lottery on your ticket is your winning numbers. If ball with your number comes up you win. Numbers are assigned to all the lottery teams regardless if they have their pick to know which teams balls actually did come up. So if you had Nets pick and Bucks you would still know if it was Nets pick that won it or say Bucks.

[Hemingway]

also, once a pick is traded, a team can't add more provisions to it. For example if we traded out 2016 1st to Toronto and put and top 3 protection on it, they could not then trade it to Memphis with a top 10 protection on it.

[bdm860]

Lottery Basics:

So there's 14 ping pong balls numbered 1-14, and 4 balls are selected at random.  There are 1001 possible combinations, but the league only assigns out an even 1000.

Now we'll have the teams ranked by worst records:

#1 (worst team) - 250 combinations
#2 (2nd worst team) - 199 combinations
.
.
.
#14 (best team not in playoffs) - 5 combinations

Combinations are assigned to teams in sequential order (with the order the number is drawn in not mattering so 1,2,3,4 is the same as 4,3,2,1).  So the team in the #1 spot gets the first 250 combinations:

1,2,3,4
1,2,3,5
1,2,3,6
.
.
.
1,7,11,14
1,7,12,13
1,7,12,14 (what I believe is the 250th combination).

And this continues on and on with the team in the #14 spot getting the last 5 combinations of:

10,11,12,13
10,11,12,14
10,11,13,14
10,12,13,14

(with the league not giving out the 1001st combination of 11,12,13,14):

So whoever the rep is sitting in the room for the #1 worst team, they know that pretty much if the #1 is pulled along with any number 7 or less, they've won.  The #14 team knows that it has to be all numbers 10 or higher for them to win.  It's not like you're looking through 250 random lottery tickets trying to match up the numbers.

So in your hypothetical, it's very easy to know which slot the assigned number came from and which team it belonged to.  Was it combination 1-250, 251-449, 450-605, etc.?

Now if a team has multiple combination ranges like in the OPs hypothetical with Boston having the ping pong ball combinations for the teams in the #1 (1-250), #2 (251-449), and #3 (450-605) spots.  If one of the first 605 combinations gets pulled, Boston wins, but it still depends on which combination was pulled as the balls have to be redrawn for picks 2 and 3.  So if combination #147 gets pulled Boston wins, they'll then put all the balls back and redraw again for pick #2, now if combination #218 gets drawn, Boston doesn't win the #2 pick (not yet anyways), because they already won with one of the first 250 combinations, so they'll have to keep redrawing until a combination outside of #1-250 is drawn.  If combination #604 gets drawn for the #2 pick, yay Boston wins again this time from the third slot, so they'll put the balls back and redraw again and they'll keep redrawing until a combination outside of 1-250 and 450-605 gets drawn.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[86MaxwellSmart]

Lottery Basics:

So there's 14 ping pong balls numbered 1-14, and 4 balls are selected at random.  There are 1001 possible combinations, but the league only assigns out an even 1000.

Now we'll have the teams ranked by worst records:

#1 (worst team) - 250 combinations
#2 (2nd worst team) - 199 combinations
.
.
.
#14 (best team not in playoffs) - 5 combinations

Combinations are assigned to teams in sequential order (with the order the number is drawn in not mattering so 1,2,3,4 is the same as 4,3,2,1).  So the team in the #1 spot gets the first 250 combinations:

1,2,3,4
1,2,3,5
1,2,3,6
.
.
.
1,7,11,14
1,7,12,13
1,7,12,14 (what I believe is the 250th combination).

And this continues on and on with the team in the #14 spot getting the last 5 combinations of:

10,11,12,13
10,11,12,14
10,11,13,14
10,12,13,14

(with the league not giving out the 1001st combination of 11,12,13,14):

So whoever the rep is sitting in the room for the #1 worst team, they know that pretty much if the #1 is pulled along with any number 7 or less, they've won.  The #14 team knows that it has to be all numbers 10 or higher for them to win.  It's not like you're looking through 250 random lottery tickets trying to match up the numbers.

So in your hypothetical, it's very easy to know which slot the assigned number came from and which team it belonged to.  Was it combination 1-250, 251-449, 450-605, etc.?

Now if a team has multiple combination ranges like in the OPs hypothetical with Boston having the ping pong ball combinations for the teams in the #1 (1-250), #2 (251-449), and #3 (450-605) spots.  If one of the first 605 combinations gets pulled, Boston wins, but it still depends on which combination was pulled as the balls have to be redrawn for picks 2 and 3.  So if combination #147 gets pulled Boston wins, they'll then put all the balls back and redraw again for pick #2, now if combination #218 gets drawn, Boston doesn't win the #2 pick (not yet anyways), because they already won with one of the first 250 combinations, so they'll have to keep redrawing until a combination outside of #1-250 is drawn.  If combination #604 gets drawn for the #2 pick, yay Boston wins again this time from the third slot, so they'll put the balls back and redraw again and they'll keep redrawing until a combination outside of 1-250 and 450-605 gets drawn.

Hopefully that makes sense.

"Combinations are assigned to teams in sequential order"
THIS is why I think the Lottery COULD be rigged in any given year----You could make sure that certain numbers do NOT get picked---they need to assign numbers in RANDOM order...Refer to 2007, when 3 teams Blatantly tanked--and ALL 3 got screwed.

[loco_91]

Let's  say celtics have a rough year and finish dead last.

 Second in the east is more likely.

First in the east and a championship is more likely.

Have you seen the Sixers?!